this is Hygon
It looks like Hygon has permanent license to x86 architecture and can continue to increase their self control over the CPU. I think this implies they can add custom instruction
Chinese semiconductor industry
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
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The issue is compatibility. Phytium and Huawei may have licenses to v8 ARM ISA, but they will not get license to v9, v10… in a sanctioned scenario. Pyhtium and Huawei are free to make as many v8-based ARM CPUs as they like, but they will not be able to run softwares that are designed to run on ARM cores with ISA v9, v10… Huawei phones with v8 ISA SOC will have no market inside and outside of China because they can’t run the latest versions of popular apps.
Sanctioned CPU/SOC makers may even have trouble getting support from open source softwares because app maintainers are unlikely to be interested at keeping a branch just for v8 ARM ISA.
Compatibility issue is the major reason Chinese companies should switch to RISC-V. Due to its open nature, no one can prevent Chinese companies from making CPU/SOC with the latest RISC-V instruction set. Chinese companies don’t have to worry about app compatibilities or maintaining open source software themselves.
Well, risc-v is still a few years away. For cloud computing and corporations, they are probably going to use kylin os which will come with Chinese softwares that are fully supported for Chinese chip makers. As long as china has just a couple of dominant cpu designers, then they will all be supported.
All Linux distributions contain thousands of little OSS applications and libraries, those apps and libraries are maintained by thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of volunteers. Kylin is just another Linux distribution with a Chinese skinned UI and some Chinese apps. It is gonna be a costly affair to merge all the updates to those thousands of apps and libraries to the China-specific branch, especially since you have to strip out codes that make use of the new instruction sets.
The Chinese CPU are reaching respectable scores via increasing number of cores (which becomes a qc issue trying to stuff that many cores into a cpu) or adding a 2nd cpu to be in that "5year" range. The single core scores are still in that 7-10 year range
From FT - The Biden administration is set to put chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies on a trade blacklist, in the latest US effort to target Chinese technology companies that it believes threaten its security. The US commerce department will place YMTC and other Chinese companies on its “entity list” as early as this week, according to three people familiar with the plan. US groups are barred from selling technology to companies on the list unless they have a hard-to-obtain export licence.
All is fair in war
Hopefully we won't have another 5 pages of whining and complaining this time
This is interesting, US employment in semis has been relatively flat for a while:
you should stop saying these unwise words... China is trying to kick the US ass out of its own high end products... they need investment..
Recently, US companies are expanding fabless in China... including Tesla, Apple, Intel, Qualcomm....
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